Eat My Charlotte

This week, Capital Grille on North Tryon launches their Master Wine Tasting event, offering up samples of twelve highly-rated, hand-selected wines with the purchase of a lunch or dinner. Master Sommelier George Miliotes (I wrote about him here) personally chose the Spanish, Argentinean, Napa and South African selections for the six-week promotion that starts July 13th and runs through August 23rd.

The wine tasting costs $25 at dinner and $10 at lunch (per person) and you’ll receive 1- to 3-ounce pours of each selection. For the first three-week part of the promotion, you can taste the following wines from Spain and Argentina: (more…)

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Are you a fan of Oregon wine country? Now’s your chance to tell the world why their wine rocks your world, publicly. Oregon Wine Board launched their Capture the Spirit of Oregon Wine Country online video and photo contest on Facebook. To enter, you’ll need to share your experiences via “creative and memorable” photo essays or 60-second videos.

And, like other video and photo competitions, there’s a voting component. If you’re a member of Facebook, you can vote for your favorites from July 4 to August 21. Submissions will be accepted until August 21. Based on creativity, originality and fan response, six $500 cash prizes will be awarded (three photos and three videos). But here’s the best part: (more…)

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Not feeling too great? Is the sharp contrast of the hot weather outside and the freezing temps inside the office causing you to sniffle? Just fix yourself a drink!

A drink of rye whiskey sweetened with rock candy and perhaps some fruits and bitter herbs, Rock and Rye was once believed to be a cure-all for the common cold. So famous were the phlegm-fighting qualities of the drink in days gone by that children used to be given rock-and-rye-flavored cough drops at the first sign of hacking and whooping. Now the drink is being revived by bartenders who see it as a cure for the common cocktail.

Read the rest of this story on WSJ.com.

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Columnist Tony Cecchini has a secret love, and it’s green.

Vinho Verde (pronounced veen-yo vaird) is the name of a large region of northern Portugal, and by extension its wines. Though over half of those are brutally harsh reds that rarely see these shores, what we mean when we talk about traditional vinho verde here is a shockingly idiosyncratic white wine: bone-dry, extremely low in alcohol, lemony-tart, limpid almost to the point of being watery and with a very slight fizz. The wines can be melon-soft or have grapefruit-peel zest, but they are all easy-access, up-front quaffers, perfect for the beach and its accompanying seafood. It’s called “green wine” not for its cast, but perhaps because, more than almost any other wine, it is made to be drunk as young as possible (and also because the region is the greenest in Portugal).

Read the full story at T Design and Living.

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If you’re looking for an alternative to the clubbing scene for your next girls night out, you might want to check out Amber Crest Winery this weekend. On June 5, they host their next Girls Night Out event, the summer version, with wine, chocolate and fun games. At this event, you will be treated to a glass of wine and wine truffles upon arrival. There will also be a blind taste tasting and then you will hand bottle your own custom bottle of wine with a commemorative Girls Night Out label to take home with you as a souvenir.

June 5, 7 p.m.- 8:30 p.m. The cost is only $29 including your custom-labeled bottle of wine. RSVP and prepayment are required. Call to register 704-708-9463. 9623-L E Independence Blvd, Matthews.

Here’s a video of what to expect at Amber Crest Winery.

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• Tutored unoaked white wines with Jeremy Mason at Global Restaurant, 3520 Toringdon Way, on Wednesday, May 27 from 6:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. $16. 704-248-0866.

• June tutored tasting events at McNinch House with Anthony Wesley, 511 N. Church St.: June 1- wines of Italy; June 15- Pinot Noir; June 29- wines of Spain. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. $20. 704-332-6159.

• Tutored tasting with Debra Lewis, National Sales Manager of Vintage ’59 Imports, at The Wine Shop at Foxcroft, 7824 Fairview Road, Thursday, June 4 at 7 p.m. $20. 704-365-6550.

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Esquire posted its Best Bars of America list, and only one made it from North Carolina. Charlotte, N.C., to be exact.

Are you ready to see which one of our fancy, schmancy bars made it on the list?

*Drunken drum roll please …*

(more…)

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It sounds like bottled baked potato with bacon topping. It kinda skeezes me out, yet intrigues. But, given the growing fascination with all things pork and cured, we should have expected it: A potato-based vodka with a “savory bacon flavor” has been invented in Seattle.

Created by Black Rock Spirits after two years of testing, Bakon Vodka celebrates the renaissance of our favorite salty slab. With no tongue-in-cheek, they are “bringing home the bacon.”

The Web site says: “Our vodka is column-distilled using a single heating process that doesn’t ‘bruise’ the alcohol like the multiple heating cycles needed to make a typical pot-still vodka. No tinge or burn on the tongue, no obnoxious smoky or chemical flavors, just a clean refreshing potato vodka with delicious savory bacon flavor.” (more…)

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Absinthe. Supposedly in its lethal version, a taste of “the green fairy” will make you hallucinate, which is why it was illegal for so long in Western countries. Two years ago, the prohibition of absinthe in the United States was lifted. “The new rules allow real wormwood-flavored absinthes to be sold as long as they contain only small amounts of thujone, the wormwoody compound long thought to be responsible for any psychoactive qualities the old absinthes may have had.”

I’ve got two small bottles of the stuff in my cupboard at home. A friend brought home a set of three that he picked up on a stop in Germany on his way back from Iraq. That was almost two years ago. We tried the first bottle the first night. Yuck. That’s why the other two are still in my cabinet.

Read up more on absinthe in this WSJ.com article. Or see a feature from food writer Tricia Childress here.

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This story makes me a little sad. I like vodka.

A Web site entitled the End of Vodka (theendofvodka.com), hosted by the makers of an açaí-flavored liqueur called VeeV, spitefully depicts vodka drinkers as “vodka bots” — like the suited hedge-fund type, animated on the site, chanting “models and bottles,” or the miniskirted blonde who bubbles “girls’ night out!”

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The “tofu of the bar” — as Paul Clarke, a cocktail blogger, calls vodka — appears to be losing its once-mighty cachet (if not, however, its dominant market share). An instant relic, perhaps, of the dissipated boom times (Trump vodka, anyone? … Anyone?). Or maybe a victim of America’s savvier taste buds. To hear some people talk, either way, it’s time to consign vodka to the same mock-worthy bin as white zinfandel, and be done with it.

Well, what do you think? Are the glory days of vodka over with?

Read the rest of this NY Times story here.

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